


what we deserve

by genderneutralnoun



Category: Original Work
Genre: Animal Death, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Hurt and comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-02-16 08:04:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21504583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genderneutralnoun/pseuds/genderneutralnoun
Summary: The only scene so far I wrote for a new original story of mine, and painfully relevant to my own current events.
Relationships: Arlex/Chrysanthemum, female OC/female OC





	what we deserve

**Author's Note:**

> Chrys's full name is Chrysanthemum, a kind of flower. Who doesn't love flower names?

Not knowing what else to do, Chrys reached out to the trees outside.  _ Sad,  _ she said simply.

_ Why? _ they asked, in the way trees do.

_ A friend died. _ Chrys took a shaky breath.  _ One of the new birds. Snowflake. _

_ What cause?  _ This was natural for trees; to wonder why. They were always growing upwards, towards the sky, thinking themselves above everything below them, as the great pillars of the forest. They were thinkers, but could be so wrapped up in thinking, they forgot to feel.

_ Sickness. She seemed fine. Then she was dead. _

_ Sickness,  _ they repeated. The soul-prints of the sick trees in the area flashed through Chrys’s mind; twisted boughs, yellow leaves, tunnels from invasive species.  _ How is sickness fast? _

Flamy sighed.  _ Fast _ to trees was being cut down, or broken. They moved slow and thought slower. They were unique in that many of them had their own identities, separate from the forest; a sense of self that set them apart from others. As such, they did not understand the plants that shared collective consciousnesses. 

_ It may not have been fast,  _ Chrys corrected,  _ but I did not recognize the signs. They are different in different animals. Not like flora. We learn, we grow. _

Quiet. Then,  _ Who recycles the body? _

Chrys realized she should have known this was coming, but she had not. She blanched, the matter-of-fact tone unsettling her. After taking a moment to compose herself, she answered,  _ It will be buried. For the decomposers to take.  _

_ Nothing is wasted,  _ the trees pondered.

Chrys felt anger flare up in her, and before she could think, she responded.  _ Waste!  _ she screamed, causing the trees to shiver.  _ Waste! Too young, life too short! Beautiful, loving, unique! _

_ Sometimes we die young,  _ they said.  _ That is how it is.  _

_ It’s not fair! Waste! _

_ Nothing is wasted,  _ they said.  _ Nothing is wasted. _

Abruptly, Chrys snapped the link; while that was like hanging up the phone to many beings, trees usually didn’t care, which somehow annoyed her more, the fact that it didn’t matter to them. She crossed her arms around herself and sunk back deeper in the couch, tears forming in her eyes.

* * *

The softest of noises broke her out of her pit of misery; padding, not the click-click-click of their dog walking across the wooden floor, but Arlex’s quiet padding, her feet fluffier and designed to be stealthy when needed. She leapt up on the couch next to Chrys, then transformed. “Hey,” she said gently.

“Hi.” Chrys’s voice was croaky. 

“Is there anything you’d like to talk about?”

“They’re so  _ stupid! _ ” she blurted out, before she could stop herself. “I talked to the stupid trees and all they cared about was who was going to  _ eat her! _ ”

Arlex was quiet for just a beat too long. “Well, I care. About the other stuff, I mean.”

Despite everything, Chrys giggled; a tiny giggle, but a giggle nonetheless. Then she was angry at herself for giggling. It was inappropriate, but Arlex was just so  _ cute… _

She carefully steered her mind away from that dangerous thought. Arlex was getting better at slipping through mental walls, as they practiced, and while she never usually invaded, she might be tempted to check on her when she was this upset. And Chrys could never make herself stop her. She trusted her completely… 

“You know,” Arlex said cautiously, breaking into her thoughts, “maybe there are some things plants can’t, or don’t, understand.”

“That’s rich, coming from you,” Chrys said, regretting it immediately. However, Arlex didn’t seem to care; if she did, she hid it remarkably well, and hiding things was  _ not  _ something she was good at. 

“I know, but… um, we can talk about that later. Anyway, what I’m saying is… maybe you should talk about it with, you know, a human. Like, um… me.”

Chrys laughed; a real laugh, this time. “You? You’re a magic wolf! You’re lingual, but who knows if you have the neurostructure for understanding specifically human emotions?”

Arlex huffed, then softened. “Actually…  _ I  _ know,” she admitted. “I… I’m a human. I think I was reborn with my memories and, uh, neurostructure intact.”

“You don’t even know what that word means, do you?”

“So like, I think I’m actually a pretty optimal conversation partner. For you. Uh, s-since you’re, you know, a [redacted]. And I’m… kind of a wolf.”

Chrys was quiet. “I think I knew, already,” she admitted. “You… you don’t Speak like wolves do. You Sound… like a human. And since all forms of thought, including Speech, are dependant on neurostructure, well.” She shrugged. “I guess I never really connected the dots because everything else about you was so…” She initially wanted to say ‘fascinating’, but instead said, “Strange.”

Arlex smiled. “So, do you want to talk about it?”

Chrys did. She talked about it. She started crying early on, but finished quickly, and Arlex said nothing, simply hugging her. And Chrys cried. She cried for Snowflake, who she’d had for less than a month; for Dewdrop, who was already mourning her friend, and could possibly get sick too, or stop eating or drinking; she cried for Arlex, who loved her too and protected her; but most of all she cried at herself, and from herself, but also for herself. She hated herself and she was sorry for herself. She blamed herself and she knew there was nothing she could have done. But unequivocally, the part she hated most, and understood least, was the part of her that was tired of being sad, that wanted to move on. She deserved to be sad, to hate herself. She deserved to be miserable. 

She deserved… 

“Everything,” said Arlex quietly, but Chrys didn’t hear it.

**Author's Note:**

> So, uh...  
> Snowflake, and Dewdrop, are real. We got them on the 22nd of October, 2019. Today is the 20th of November, same year. They're parakeets.  
> I noticed Snowflake had dirty feathers around her vent some time ago, but being the absolute fucking god-damned idiot I am, I only mentioned it last night. We said we should probably take her in, since she was a new pet, after all. Then she died in the night.  
> It's funny. I was literally catastrophizing about that while we were talking about her last night. She... she was the smallest bird in the tiny, cooped-up thing we picked her out of. And she was very light colored, hence Snowflake. Dewdrop got her name to match Snowflake. It's one thirty where I am and today still feels like a nightmare. So I did what I do best to process my feelings: I wrote.
> 
> Anyway, about this story. Basically Chrys is a person who can talk to nature; kind of inspired by the (Wings of Fire spoilers!) leafspeak in the 13th book. (End spoilers.) But of course she can also talk to animals. I've experimented with characters talking to animals or Pokemon or whatever, but this one is different; animals and plants don't think in human terms, making it interesting for them to interact. Plants and animals are already vastly different; most vertebrates are actually sentient (hence why I use the term "lingual" in here, which basically means they can understand abstract concepts and language as opposed to like, how dolphins communicate; it's not really a "language"), while plants do have a consciousness, and "talk" to each other through their roots. Especially prairie plants! I wanted to address that here. Also, I think this is an important moment for Chrys's character, and would be placed around the middle of the book; since she was a kid, she had more flora and fauna friends than human friends, and since she usually thinks very logically, likes to confide in the trees. Kind of a metaphor for the fact that you can't always look at things logically. In the book she gets more human friends, but also grows in ways that deepen her power, and, interestingly, she returns to nature as something to enjoy. As she went to school she had less and less energy to go outside (she's autistic, like that's a surprise), and so mostly talked to nature for purely practical matters, until she dropped out of high school and learned how to love life again. I guess it's a story about that; learning how to love life. Oh, and also Arlex becomes her girlfriend. So I guess it's also about learning how to love a certain wolf-girl.
> 
> Feel free to get as emotional as you want in the comments. I could use some support.


End file.
